The Internet and emerging digital technologies have made online publishing quite simple. Whether you are a seasoned publisher or a novice writer, you can take advantage of various online publishing platforms to publish your eBook. However, simple as this seems, there is a caveat and that is anyone can download and share your content with a few clicks. Every time someone shares, copies or downloads your content without your permission, you lose revenue. While the Internet offers a host of advantages, its nature is such that it makes sharing easy and monitoring extremely difficult. In the online arena, traditional copyright laws hold no ground and hence there is a need for an alternative means to protect your eBooks.
Digital rights management, or DRM as it is commonly known, is a means to protect the copyright of your work online and ensure secure distribution of your digital books. DRM for digital books works more or less in the same way as for digital films and music, adding a protective barrier on your digital property to prevent any unauthorized access.
Benefits of DRM
You can secure distribution of your digital books by adding an extra layer of protection with DRM. The added layer of security helps to protect rights of your work and prevents any unauthorized distribution, copy or print.
Increased Revenue: When you publish digital books online, you have the choice to offer the readers access to the material either for free or behind a paywall. In case the eBook promotes your products or services, it makes business sense to offer a free download, but for other purposes you would want your readers to make a purchase. As mentioned above, DRM protects copyright and prevents unauthorized downloads, copy or sharing of your material, thus making purchase necessary. DRM ensures that only authorized people have the key to unlock your intellectual capital. Needless to say, you benefit in terms of increased revenue.
Prevent IPR Theft: DRM prevents theft of your intellectual property rights (IPR), either deliberately or as an unintended consequence. Besides, you can also monitor the people who have viewed your digital books, if they have tried to pass on their authorization to others, and who these other people are.
Ensure Regulatory Compliance: DRM also helps you maintain confidentiality of all your business information on your PC or laptop and distribute your digital books to the right people without any loss of control over your data.
Maintain IPR Control: When you ensure secure distribution of your digital books with DRM, you can also monitor how many times a reader has accessed your content. For instance, you can allow your readers to read the abstract, or part of a chapter to build anticipation and then allow access to the rest of the eBook on purchase.
How to Protect your eBook for Secure Distribution
Once you upload your eBook on a digital publishing platform, you will get the option to add DRM encryption and Social DRM, digital watermarking. The platform will provide you an option to select DRM encryption and once you do that your eBook will automatically be stored in an encrypted vault, with restricted access to your content.
In the next step, you can also integrate the API of the digital publishing platform with your website to allow readers make a direct purchase. When a reader makes a purchase, they will be provided with a unique ID and password, which will unlock the content.
You can provide your readers various options to access the content. For instance, you can provide limited access for a limited period to access your digital book. Once the limit is crossed, they would have to make a purchase. Limited access can be the preface of the eBook in case of fiction, or a teaser from a non-fiction eBook, for instance, research on a medical subject. Here, you can set DRM to provide an abstract to create interest and motivate readers to make a purchase.
With DRM, you can also set download links that expire based on your preference settings. Besides, you can allow set access to your content a number of times during a month, for instance, read ten articles for free and then make a purchase to read further.
Guide:
How to Create a DRM Protected eBook and Distribute it Securely
Distribute your DRM-protected Digital Books
There are two ways to ensure a secure distribution of your eBooks. One, you can hire an aggregator who distributes your content on their own eBook stores or through other online retailers. These aggregators may charge you upfront fee or commission of your sales or both. The second is that you distribute the DRM-protected eBooks on a digital platform of your choice based on a licensing model or royalties.
In Conclusion
Digital rights management or DRM is a means to ensure secure distribution of your digital books. DRM prevents copyright infringement, ensuring that people don’t copy, download or share your proprietary content without your permission. It allows you to monitor who views and shares your content, who buys your eBooks. In other words, DRM gives you complete control over your intellectual property, ensuring that you reap its rewards. With DRM, you can control how your eBook is downloaded, uploaded, accessed or shared. Restrict the copy-paste feature, leaving little or no opportunity to copy text, limit the sharing options you provide to the buyer, and finally, control on how many devices the eBook can be downloaded.
To ensure secure distribution of your digital books choose a digital publishing platform that allows you to DRM-protect your eBooks. While there are several publishing platforms, you may want to consider our proprietary solution, KITABOO, a highly secure cloud-based eBook distribution platform. Once you publish on KITABOO, all your digital content will be encrypted and DRM protected and you will be provided with unique codes to access it. You can then securely distribute your digital books on various platforms and on multiple devices (smartphones, tablets or PCs).
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Mike Harman
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